The woman who forced the United States to criminalize police searches without a warrant has died at the age of 91.

Dollree Mapp won a landmark 1961 Supreme Court case that transformed civil rights after cops barged into her Ohio apartment and used the findings to charge her with possession of porn.

Her case ultimately prompted the nation's high court to rule that evidence obtained by illegal searches and seizures could not be used in state court.

Defiant: Dollree Mapp's insistence that police have a warrant before searching changed civil rights in the U.S.

The case, Mapp v. Ohio, is a staple of law school textbooks and considered a milestone case on the Fourth Amendment, which requires law enforcement officers to get a warrant before conducting a search.

Mapp died on October 31 in Conyers, Georgia.

A relative and caretaker, Carolyn Mapp, confirmed her death Wednesday and said she died on the day after her birthday at the age of 91.

After a struggle an officer got the paper back, Mapp was handcuffed for being 'belligerent,' and officers searched her home.

They didn't find the person they were looking for, but they did find some pornographic books and pictures.

At the time, an Ohio law made having obscene material a crime, and Mapp was convicted, though she said the materials belonged to a former boarder. Prosecutors never produced a search warrant at trial.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court overturned Mapp's conviction in a 6-3 decision, ruling in 1961 that illegally obtained evidence could not be used in state court.

The court had previously ruled that this was the case in federal court, but Mapp's case extended the 'exclusionary rule' to states where the vast majority of criminal prosecutions take place, broadening the protection.

Following the landmark ruling, Mapp sold real estate in New York, said Carolyn Mapp, who called her 'a force to be reckoned with.'

'A force to be reckoned with': Mapp's great niece Carolyn Mapp said Dollree, left, was a strong woman

She made news again in 1971 when she was convicted of heroin possession in New York and sentenced to 20 years to life. Her sentence was ultimately commuted.

Mapp was briefly married to Cleveland heavyweight boxer Jimmy Bivins who died in 2012. Her only daughter, Barbara Bivins, died in 2002.

A memorial for Mapp will be held in New York.

Late in life Mapp told a professor who wrote a book about her case that she was pleased the ruling helped protect other Americans but always considered her case a personal struggle.

'Any time someone is abused by the system, they have a right to stand up for themselves,' she told Carolyn N. Long of Washington State University Vancouver. Mapp also told Long she never got back the pornographic books that touched off her case.